The document attributed to Ioannes XXIII, titled “Constitutio Apostolica Oxomensis (Soriana),” decrees that the historic Diocese of Osma in Spain shall henceforth bear the compound name “Oxomensis-Soriana,” and that the church of St Peter in Soria is elevated to the rank of concathédral, with corresponding rights, honors, and obligations, to be implemented under the authority of the Apostolic Nuncio according to the 1953 Concordat with Spain. It presents itself as a routine administrative reconfiguration ordered by a “Supreme Pontiff” for the pastoral good of souls, solemnized in juridical language and sealed with the external forms of papal authority.
In reality, this act is a symptomatically cold, bureaucratic manipulation of sacred ecclesiastical structures by an intruder at the very threshold of the conciliar revolution, exposing the spiritual void and juridical usurpation at the heart of the emerging neo-church.
Usurped Authority Cloaked in Canonical Formalism
From the perspective of integral Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, the first and decisive problem lies not in the geographical adjustment, but in the subject who presumes to legislate.
The entire text rests on the premise that Ioannes XXIII is the true Roman Pontiff, exercising the supreme, ordinary, and immediate jurisdiction instituted by Christ in Peter and his legitimate successors. Yet decades of subsequently manifest doctrines, acts and “council” decrees tied to the same line beginning with John XXIII reveal a systematic overthrow of the very foundations guarded by preceding popes, particularly Pius IX, Leo XIII, St Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII. This retroactively unmasks such documents as acts of a usurping *potestas* operating within the shell of Catholic forms.
Key points of contradiction with pre-1958 magisterial teaching (cf. Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX; Lamentabili sane and Pascendi of St Pius X; Quas Primas of Pius XI):
– The same Ioannes XXIII convenes and inaugurates the so‑called Second Vatican Council, from which will flow the institutionalized principles of religious liberty, false ecumenism, the cult of man, and the relativization of the Social Kingship of Christ condemned by prior popes.
– The conciliar and post-conciliar program systematically rejects the integral principles reaffirmed by Pius IX against liberalism and naturalism, St Pius X against Modernism, and Pius XI in defense of Christ’s universal and public Kingship (Quas Primas).
The principle articulated by classical theologians and reaffirmed in the supplied Defense of Sedevacantism file is clear: *manifest heresy is incompatible with papal authority*. As Bellarmine synthesizes the patristic consensus: a manifest heretic cannot be pope, because he is no member of the Church at all; a non-Christian cannot be the head of the Christian body. When an alleged “pontiff” inaugurates, blesses, or promulgates doctrines and practices that directly contradict the prior, unanimous, and definitive magisterium (e.g. religious indifferentism, collegial deconstruction of papal primacy, practical negation of the public rights of Christ the King), his claim to the papal office collapses in the order of divine law.
Thus this constitution, while formally correct in its Latinity and canonical phrasing, stands as an example of *usurped jurisdiction exercised through orthodox-seeming minutiae*. The act is not neutral; it normalizes an impostor as “Servus Servorum Dei” at the dawn of a revolution which, by doctrine already condemned in Lamentabili and the Syllabus, cannot be of Christ.
Pastoral Rhetoric Without Supernatural Substance
At the beginning, the constitution invokes the “good of souls” as the supreme law:
“Quandoquidem animorum bonum hominumque salus… in summis Ecclesiae consiliis est, ideo Nos… non abnuimus… de dioecesium institutis immutare, si certior sit spes gregis salutem fieri usque tutiorem.”
Translation: “Since indeed the good of souls and the salvation of men… are among the highest concerns of the Church, therefore We… do not refuse… to change somewhat the diocesan institutions, if there is a more certain hope that the salvation of the flock will thus become yet more secure.”
At first glance, this is traditional language. But precisely here the poisonous shift appears in embryo:
– The pastoral motive is asserted, yet nothing in the text touches the true supernatural means of salvation: no mention of the Most Holy Sacrifice, the preservation of sound doctrine, the fight against error, the integrity of the sacraments, the necessity of state of grace, the condemnation of modern vices undermining the faith.
– The “good of souls” is reduced to an administrative optimization of titles and residences, as if adjusting honorifics and adding a concathédral would “make the salvation of the flock more secure.”
Compared with authentic papal acts before 1958:
– St Pius X, faced with the plague of Modernism, did not content himself with administrative cosmetics; he issued Lamentabili and Pascendi, imposed the anti-modernist oath, and struck directly at the doctrinal cancer.
– Pius XI, in Quas Primas, did not rearrange diocesan titles to flatter cities; he thundered that peace and order are impossible until individuals and states publicly recognize and submit to Christ’s Kingship, and he condemned laicism as an apostasy depriving society of divine foundations.
– Pius IX, in the Syllabus, named, numbered, and anathematized the modern false principles that today’s conciliar sect has enthroned.
By contrast, this document exemplifies the neo-pastoralism that will culminate in the conciliar sect: an appearance of care for souls, expressed through sterile legalism, *without one word* of warning against liberalism, Masonry, indifferentism, or the encroaching modernist apostasy already denounced by St Pius X. This silence is not neutral; it is incriminating.
Administrative Manipulation of Sacred Structures
The concrete provisions:
– The Diocese of Osma is renamed “Oxomensis-Soriana.”
– The church of St Peter in Soria becomes a concathédral with corresponding rights and honors.
– The bishop may reside in Soria as he sees fit.
– Canons and beneficed clergy may exercise capitular functions in the concathédral.
– Implementation is entrusted to the Nuncio, referencing the 1953 concordat.
On the factual level, such modifications are not in themselves contrary to Catholic ecclesiology. The Church legitimately erects, suppresses, joins, and adapts dioceses for pastoral reasons. However:
1. There is no articulation of a supernatural necessity:
– No specification that this serves the *cura animarum* in the sense of ensuring doctrinal orthodoxy, Eucharistic reverence, confession, catechesis, or resistance to error.
– No mention that the change must guard against modernist infiltrations condemned by St Pius X.
– No insistence on enforcing pre-existing doctrine in a time of intensifying apostasy and Masonic activity, explicitly identified by Pius IX as the “synagogue of Satan” warring on the Church.
2. Instead, the motive given is that the city of Soria has grown and deserves recognition:
– This anthropocentric criterion—urban growth and civic prestige—governs a decision clothed in sacred language. It subordinates the visible expression of the apostolic hierarchy to considerations of demographic and political convenience, precisely the spirit that Pius IX condemned in propositions denying the innate rights of the Church and subjecting her structures to secular powers.
3. The heavy insistence on papal legal authority:
– The text piles up juridical formulas: nullification of contrary norms, threats of penalties for disobedience, authentication clauses, guarantees of legal force.
– The more the document insists on authority in form, the more glaring becomes the absence of authority in substance, given that the same claimant will soon unleash a council that bulldozes the prior magisterium’s anti-liberal, anti-modernist bulwark.
In short: a valid pope might have enacted similar provisions; but here the act functions as part of a broader strategy—stabilizing the appearance of normal Catholic continuity in small matters while preparing a cataclysmic rupture in doctrine, liturgy, and ecclesiology. This is how a paramasonic structure operates: respect the shell, hollow out the content.
Linguistic Sterility as a Symptom of Naturalism
The rhetoric of this constitution is revealing:
– It opens with one standard supernatural reference to Christ redeeming mankind, only to slide immediately into a technocratic rearrangement of titles.
– It never mentions:
– *The Kingship of Christ over Spain*.
– The obligation of civil rulers and Catholic nations to defend the rights of the Church, as taught by Pius IX and Pius XI.
– The pressing need, in 1959, to protect the faithful from the doctrinal subversion already at work in seminaries, biblical institutes, and theological faculties.
Instead, we see:
– Cautious, bureaucratic language.
– Deferential mention of the 1953 concordat and the Nuncio’s formal competence.
– A purely formal “pastoral” justification, entirely devoid of concrete supernatural content.
This linguistic pattern is not accidental; it is consonant with the emerging conciliar style:
– Speak often of “pastoral needs,” “signs of the times,” “updating” (*aggiornamento*), “dialogue,” and “service.”
– Avoid precise condemnation of the very errors identified by prior magisterium as mortal for souls.
– Transform the living magisterium from a hammer against heresy into a notary of structural adjustments and humanistic projects.
*Silentium dogmaticum*—the studied omission of the sharp edges of Catholic doctrine—is itself a betrayal. Pius XI did not hesitate to identify secularism as a “plague that poisons human society” and to insist that rulers and states must publicly honor Christ the King. Here, under the name of “Ioannes XXIII,” we find no such clarity, only a docile accommodation to legal arrangements and local political realities.
Continuity in Form, Revolution in Substance
The symptomatic importance of this constitution lies precisely in its apparent harmlessness.
– To a casual reader, it is entirely orthodox: Latin, canonical, concerned with souls, reverent in form.
– To a theologically informed observer, it is an instrument of the deeper deception: maintain the prestige of Roman canonical acts while preparing to undermine the content of the faith through Vatican II and its aftermath.
This is the classic modernist tactic condemned by St Pius X in Pascendi (recalled and reinforced by Lamentabili):
– Outward obedience to forms;
– Inward subversion of substance;
– Use of ecclesiastical authority to promote evolution of doctrine and structures under the pretext of pastoral adaptation.
By 1959:
– The condemnations of Modernism (Lamentabili, Pascendi, the anti-modernist oath) were still formally in force.
– The doctrinal clarity of Quas Primas and the Syllabus remained the binding rule of faith.
– Nevertheless, the man issuing this constitution would soon inaugurate a council whose orientation, documents, and implementation are irreconcilable with those very norms, especially regarding religious liberty, ecumenism, and the nature of the Church.
Here we must apply the pre-1958 principles themselves:
– The Magisterium cannot contradict itself in matters of faith and morals, because Christ is Truth and His promise endures.
– If a teaching structure endorses what has been definitively and repeatedly condemned—religious indifferentism, the separation of Church and State as an ideal, parity of false religions, the relativization of dogma—then that structure is no longer exercising the authority of Christ but has become an *abominatio desolationis* in the holy place.
This minor constitution thus belongs to the juridical and psychological preparation of the faithful to accept the claims of this usurped authority in greater things. It is a small stone in the façade of “continuity” behind which apostasy advances.
The Absence of Militant Defense of the Faith
Measured against the robust pre-1958 papal response to liberalism, rationalism, and Masonry, one finds in this document:
– No echo of Pius IX’s warnings against secret societies waging war on the Church.
– No continuation of St Pius X’s aggressive campaign to extirpate Modernism from clergy, seminaries, and universities.
– No insistence on Christ’s Kingship over civil society, as laid down in Quas Primas.
– No reminder to bishops of their grave duty to guard the flock against error, immoral laws, and secular infiltration.
Instead, bishops and clergy are gently instructed how to exercise capitular functions in a new concathédral, while the wolves are left unmentioned.
This contrast is not a mere “style change”; it is a moral and doctrinal abdication. *Qui tacet consentire videtur* (“He who is silent is seen to consent”): in a time when the enemies of the Church press on every side, refusal to wield the sword of doctrine and discipline is complicity.
From Holy Hierarchy to Pastoral Administration of a Neo-Church
Finally, we must expose the underlying ecclesiological assumption:
– The constitution treats diocesan structures as flexible administrative units that can be reshaped to meet human and political circumstances, without reaffirming that these structures must be at the uncompromising service of immutable doctrine and sacraments.
– In itself, such flexibility is legitimate; but severed from dogmatic rigor, it becomes the model of the conciliar sect: a network of territorially managed “pastoral units,” bishoprics, “episcopal conferences,” and commissions, all functioning as a paramasonic structure promoting religious relativism, human rights ideology, and sacramental simulation.
The very use of correctly solemn forms—plombo, chancery signatures, threats of canonical penalties—by an authority that will soon authorize the dismantling of the true Roman Rite, tolerance of heresy, and institutionalized false ecumenism, is part of the deception. It accustoms clergy and faithful to obey the external shell while their faith is quietly re-engineered.
From the perspective of the integral Catholic faith:
– The only legitimate aim of altering diocesan boundaries and titles is to secure more effectively the preaching of the true faith, the worthy offering of the Most Holy Sacrifice, the integrity of the sacraments, and the defense of souls against error and vice.
– Any structure, however ancient or venerable in appearance, that serves instead to normalize usurpers, spread condemned doctrines, and silence the Social Kingship of Christ is thereby unmasked as an organ not of the Mystical Body of Christ, but of the revolution against it.
This constitution, though apparently minor, participates in that process by reinforcing the illusion that Ioannes XXIII’s regime is simply continuing the pre-1958 Church, while in reality preparing the conciliar mutation that the authentic Magisterium had anathematized in advance.
Source:
Oxomenisis (Sorianae) – Constitutio Apostolica Oxomensi Dioecesi Denominatio Soriana Iungitur. Praeterea Templum S. Petri Apostoli, ibidem exstans, ad concathedralis honorem evehitur, d. 9 m. Martii a… (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025